Point Loma  They are trailblazers and community activists, educators and mentors, founders and fireballs.

The five women inducted into the San Diego County Women’s Hall of Fame on Saturday night have each inspired, empowered and served as role models for decades.

“I’m excited and also a little in awe,” new inductee and longtime community activist Irma Castro said. “I said, ‘This is something many other women deserve.’”

Castro and her fellow inductees accepted their honors during a dinner and ceremony at UC San Diego’s Price Center.

The husband of the late Dorothy Hom — who helped found San Diego’s Gaslamp Quarter — accepted the honor on his wife’s behalf.

The new class of inductees brings to 68 the number of women bestowed with the honor by the Hall of Fame, dating back to 2001.

The Hall of Fame exhibit will soon be ready for viewing at the Women’s Museum of California, which recently moved to new digs in Liberty Station in Point Loma.

The community activist

Irma Castro was a founder and longtime director of the Chicano Federation. She has developed and run mentorship programs for Latina girls. And at 71, the passionate activist is still in the mix, working at Casa Familia in San Ysidro.

Activism is ingrained in her. She grew up on the picket lines with her parents in her native Barrio Logan neighborhood.

“We were a family that really believes in justice and that we have to be able to do our part. ... You can’t sit there and wait for the world. You have to take care of business,” said Castro.

She has spent her life fighting for Latino rights — and rocking a lot of boats.

“You stuck your foot in the door and hoped to God that they didn’t break your foot, so you could let somebody else in.”

The empowerer

Inductee Betty Evans Boone has been at the head of the line many times through her career. She was the only woman in her class when she entered University of San Diego’s law school in 1959, and a few years later became only the second woman to graduate from the school.

Finding a job was tough. One man said he was unsure as to how the firm’s legal secretaries should address her. And finding a government job — say, as a prosecutor — was initially a bust.

“They didn’t have any women, and they weren’t interested in having any women,” Boone said.

In 1967, while working in private practice, she took a job at the Office of County Counsel. She was the only female attorney.

A few years later, she helped found the Lawyer’s Club, dedicated to the advancement of women in law.

“I’m now 84 years old, and I look back on a wonderful lifetime of being a part of the feminist movement,” Boone said. “It doesn’t mean I was burning my bra. There are a lot of ways to bring about gender equality.”

The trailblazer

As chancellor of the San Diego Community College District, Constance Carroll advocates for educational access for disadvantaged students.

“That is why I have chosen community college,” Carroll said. “These are the people‘s colleges and they need our support.”

That she is the first woman in the job, which she took in 2004, Carroll said it “speaks more to the fact that the women did not have the opportunities that women do now.”

An educator for nearly four decades, Carroll, 67, was the president of San Diego Mesa College when she took the job as chancellor of the college district.

Before that, Carroll was the president of Saddleback College in Orange County.

While at Mesa and then later as chancellor, Carroll worked to help the district win voter backing of two bonds — totaling more than $1.6 billion — over four years.

The multicultural bridge builder

Even with decades of experience as a public health educator and administrator, and working as a consultant with the World Health Organization, Aurora Soriano Cudal just couldn’t get a job when she emigrated to the county from the Philippines in 1992. Not enough local experience, she was told. Repeatedly.

She channeled her frustration into creating the Filipino Help Center, a place for seniors and immigrants to get information, referrals and counseling services. Did it within a year, too.

For the last two decades, Soriano Cudal has worked extensively for the empowerment of the Filipino American community. She also writes a column for the Filipino Press, which circulates throughout the county.

She has served as the chairwoman and then president of the Council for Philippine American Organizations in San Diego County. These days, at 79 years old, Soriano Cudal serves as the region chair of the National Federation of Filipino American Associations.

The inclusion as one of this year’s Hall of Fame inductees left her surprised.

“For me, it’s enough to be in the Hall of Fame at home,” said the woman, who has been married 58 years. They have seven children, 20 grandchildren and four great-grandchildren.

The cultural guardian

Dorothy Hom, 68, left her footprint everywhere, Tom Hom said of his late wife. Dorothy Hom, who died of cancer in 1999, played a key role in founding the Gaslamp Quarter District, which brought about the preservation of more than 20 historic buildings.

She also helped form the Chinese Historical Society of Greater San Diego and Baja.